I'm not a fan of the Friday the 13th films, or at least I haven't been since I was about 13 and found out there were alternate venues for viewing women's naughty bits.

Even the lesser Nightmare on Elm Streets had some interesting aspects, and Freddy is one of the great Hollywood monsters

Chucky was fun until the filmmakers realized he was getting laughed at. It takes a lot for a movie to make me really hate Jennifer Tilly (also see: Moving Violations)

Halloween just never spoke to me; perhaps I saw it at the wrong time.

But "Night of the Living Dead" is the cold black center of fear in cinema, if not the universe, where all other spooky ideas of past present and future originate. Some films require the right mood to be effective... Blair Witch was remarkable if you were able to see it before you got sick of hearing about it, and The Shining needs a bit of personal madness from the viewer before one really "gets" what's going on. But all George Romero asked of his audience was their attention toward the screen. Once he got that, the result was inevitable.